28o THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. 



New Zealand, while sparingly represented in New South Wales, is altogether absent from 

 Queensland. Almost equally conspicuous by their absence are the rapacious shoal fishes known 

 as barracutas, which contribute so extensively to the fish supplies of the southernmost colonies, 

 including the common barracuta, Tbyrsites atiin, of Victoria, Tasmania, and New Zealand ; the 

 king-fish of Tasmania, T. Solandri ; and the rarer frost-fish of New Zealand, Lcpidopits caiidatiis. 

 Two representatives of the same family, however, popularly known as hairtails, Triclnurus savala 

 and T. hauuicla, are rarely recorded from Queensland waters ; but they nowhere occur in sufficient 

 numbers to constitute, as in the preceding instances, important fisheries. The peculiar group 

 of so-called sea perches or morwongs of the Sydney markets — genus Chilodactylus, belonging 

 properly to the same family as the trumpeters, the Cirrhitidae — while including several important 

 food species in the southern colonies, is in Queensland represented by but one comparatively 

 small and unimportant type, C. gibbosus. An additional important group that is apparently 

 altogether unrepresented in Queensland waters is that of the true cod fishes, or gadida;. One 

 species, Pseudophycis barbatus, the common rock-cod of the Melbourne and Hobart fish markets, 

 has to be included among the most important food-fishes of the southernmost colonies, and an 

 allied variety, P. brcviusculus, are not unfrequently imported to Brisbane, in the smoked form, from 

 New Zealand. Another member of the same family, Lotclla niarginata, or the beardie of the 

 Sydney market, occurs, though not abundantly, in Port Jackson, but has not hitherto been 

 recorded from Queensland. The northern rivers of Tasmania and the southern ones of Victoria 

 similarly produce a somewhat remarkable fresh-water cod, Gadopsis mannoratus, the black-fish 

 of the colonists, which is most excellent eating. 



An enumeration may now be made of those forms that pertain essentially to Queensland, 

 and that either already enter into, or are capable of utilisation for, the food supply' of the com- 

 munity. As a guide to the identification of some of the more prominent forms described, the 

 photographic illustrations reproduced in Plates XLIII. to XLVIIL, and the two Chromo- 

 lithographic plates Nos. XV. and XVI., may prove of service, and will be referred to in the order 

 of their succession. 



Following the order adopted in the appended classified list, the first group to demand 

 attention is that of the typical perch family, or percidae. This group, which is world-wide in 

 its distribution, is represented in Queensland waters by upwards of seventy species of a size 

 and quality that render them valuable for food purposes, and by about an equal number which, on 

 account of their smaller size or comparative rarity, are excluded from consideration in the same 

 category. Among the foremost on the list with relation to dimensions, and estimation from a 

 culinary point of view, is the so-called giant perch, Latcs calcarifer, Bl. (Plate XLIII., Fig. i). 

 This magnificent species, which frequents the coast-line and estuaries, from Keppel Bay north- 

 wards, attains to a length of four or five feet, and may weigh over 50 lb. In common with Ccra- 

 todiis Forsteri and Osieoglossuni Lcicliardti, this monster perch is locally- known by the title of 



